It's worth noting that Oyster raised a total of $17M as of last year: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/oysterbooks-com Runway has its limits.
Wow. What'd they burn it on?
AWS
Oyster is shutting down
21–30 of 84 posts
Re: Oyster is shutting down
#22Is it fair to Oyster's investors? According to Engadget and Recode [1], "a portion" of Oyster's staff (including its CEO and co-founders) are jumping ship for Google's Play Books division. In short, this is an indirect acquisition -- Google is snapping up the core of the company without buying all of its assets. [1] http://www.engadget.com/2015/09/21/oyster-shutting-down/
>Is it fair to Oyster's investors? The alternative is ... what? -- Actually it looks like Google will pay back investors some or all of their investment.
An acquihire is the implied alternative. I'm not sure why companies would ever acquihire when they could do this with the appropriate signing bonus.
Re: Oyster is shutting down
#23Taken without any external context, this release is nonsensical, probably because they don't bother to say why they're shutting down or what the new opportunity is. "Looking forward, we feel this is best seized by taking on new opportunities to fully realize our vision for ebooks." By... shutting down? I would have appreciated a bit of plain-speaking here.
Totally speculating here but I'd assume the company was basically out of runway and couldn't find a reasonable out so negotiated the team to google to work on something else.
Option A: company/product dies, team is scattered. Option B: company/product dies, team remains together.
Investors fucked either way but with B at least team that works well together gets to continue to do so.
In a nutshell that's what happened when I was at chumby. Sadly the company we shifted to was terrible so there was a mass exodus anyway over the following year.
Re: Oyster is shutting down
#24Another one for Our Incredible Journey: http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/
It would be nice if somebody built a Product Hunt list for these since their UI is much nicer than tumblr - "A curated list of exits!"
Re: Oyster is shutting down
#25Taken without any external context, this release is nonsensical, probably because they don't bother to say why they're shutting down or what the new opportunity is. "Looking forward, we feel this is best seized by taking on new opportunities to fully realize our vision for ebooks." By... shutting down? I would have appreciated a bit of plain-speaking here.
Google have snapped up a bunch of their staff http://www.engadget.com/2015/09/21/oyster-shutting-down/
[deleted]
Re: Oyster is shutting down
#26Is it fair to Oyster's investors? According to Engadget and Recode [1], "a portion" of Oyster's staff (including its CEO and co-founders) are jumping ship for Google's Play Books division. In short, this is an indirect acquisition -- Google is snapping up the core of the company without buying all of its assets. [1] http://www.engadget.com/2015/09/21/oyster-shutting-down/
>Is it fair to Oyster's investors? The alternative is ... what? -- Actually it looks like Google will pay back investors some or all of their investment.
From the linked recode article: "But sources said it will end up paying investors, who put a reported $17 million into the company, for the right to hire some of its staff."
That sure sounds similar to the anti-poaching agreements that Google, Apple, etc already got in trouble for.
What makes this different? Why shouldn't it just be a free market for these employees (and founders), and Google is free to offer that money directly to them, instead of needing to pay off the investors?
Re: Oyster is shutting down
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Is it fair to Oyster's investors? The alternative is ... what? -- Actually it looks like Google will pay back investors some or all of their investment.
An acquihire is the implied alternative. I'm not sure why companies would ever acquihire when they could do this with the appropriate signing bonus.
Because there are assets other than just the people. Code, network relationships, reputation, service contracts, company partnerships, IP, etc. There can also be non-competes, NDAs, security clearances, stock vesting and a multitude of other agreements to factor in.
Re: Oyster is shutting down
#28Taken without any external context, this release is nonsensical, probably because they don't bother to say why they're shutting down or what the new opportunity is. "Looking forward, we feel this is best seized by taking on new opportunities to fully realize our vision for ebooks." By... shutting down? I would have appreciated a bit of plain-speaking here.
they ran out of money and Google hired-away a bunch of their staff. simple as that. happens.
Re: Oyster is shutting down
#29Re: Oyster is shutting down
#30Taken without any external context, this release is nonsensical, probably because they don't bother to say why they're shutting down or what the new opportunity is. "Looking forward, we feel this is best seized by taking on new opportunities to fully realize our vision for ebooks." By... shutting down? I would have appreciated a bit of plain-speaking here.
Totally speculating here but I'd assume the company was basically out of runway and couldn't find a reasonable out so negotiated the team to google to work on something else. Option A: company/product dies, team is scattered. Option B: company/product dies, team remains together. Investors fucked either way but with B at least team that works well together gets to continue to do so. In a nutshell that's what happened…
it seems like a lot of money to burn through though - right?